Until the 1990's, Switzerland could be classified as either a corporatist, cooperative or coordinated market economy where non-market mechanisms of coordination among economic and political actors were very important. In this respect, Business Interest Associations (BIAs) played a key role. The aim of this paper is to look at the historical evolution of the five main peak Swiss BIAs through network analysis for five assorted dates during the 20 th century (1910, 1937, 1957, 1980 and 2000) while relying on a database that includes more than 12,000 people. First, we examine the logic of membership in these associations, which allows us to analyze their position and function within the network of the Swiss economic elite. Until the 1980's, BIAs took part in the emergence and consolidation of a closely meshed national network, which declined during the two last decades of the 20 th century. Second, we investigate the logic of influence of these associations by looking at the links they maintained with the political and administrative worlds through their links to the political parties and Parliament, and to the administration via the extraparliamentary commissions (corporatist bodies). In both cases, the recent dynamic of globalization called into question the traditional role of BIAs.

During most of the twentieth century, it was possible to consider Switzerland a coordinated market economy, characterized by dense interfirm networks and the strong role of business associations. Thanks to their cohesion and collective organization, in a context of quiet politics and informal institutions, business elites could largely self-regulate major socioeconomic issues in the shadow of politics. However, since the end of the twentieth century, Swiss business elites have undergone profound changes not only in their composition, but also in their coordinating capacity, their growing political divisions, and their connections to politics. This growing sociological and political fragmentation, combined with changes in the way of doing politics, through noisier and more formal politics, has weakened the instrumental power of Swiss business elites. To compensate for this loss of direct influence, business elites of the largest Swiss companies have developed new political strategies, relying on their growing structural power in a context of global and financial capitalism.

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This article addresses the historical emergence of business cooperation. We resort to Ho ¨pner's (2007) concepts of organization and coordination in order to analyze how firms progressively engaged in Business Interest Associations (BIAs) and interlocking directorates during the first part of the 20th century. Our inquiry is based on a network analysis on large firms of the Swiss machine, electrotechnical and metallurgy (MEM) sector. Our results show that before the First World War, only major firms were promoting coordination and organization through, respectively, interlocking directorates and BIAs. Although many firms were reluctant to cooperate in the first place, interests beyond the firm level (organization) and the economic needs of firms (coordination) had cumulative effects, and most firms progressively engaged in both mechanisms of cooperation from the interwar period. We argue that differentiating between organization and coordination contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the emergence of non-liberal capitalism.

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